On the front page of the paper we have a picture of 8 of the 9 candidates running for the Perth Amboy Board of Education. As we mentioned of the front page, this photo was taken at a Candidate’s Forum held on Tuesday, 10/29/13. I happened to hear about this forum through the grapevine.

As you know our paper tries to print as many community events as possible. Unfortunately when we found out about this forum, it was too late to put in the paper.

The AFT gave us plenty of notification of their forum to put in our paper to inform the public.

We are puzzled that the group heading the 10/29/13 forum did not contact us, especially since it would have been a free service. This is a service that we do to help promote community awareness.

What was even more puzzling was the inconsistency of the question and answer session. There was no consistency when a candidate answered in English or Spanish. We noticed that a lot of the people in the audience were connected in some ways to the candidates.

Fortunately, some of the candidates running have had their views already stated when they ran for this office before. Some of the candidates are sitting or former Board Members.

Some of these candidates are very familiar to the viewers who consistently attend the Board of Education Meetings on watch them on PA-TV.

Several of these candidates have spoken out at the Board of Education Meetings and we have reported on their comments. We have a 2 hour video on the Amboy Guardian website www.amboyguardian. com showing the 10/28/13 forum.

If you have a computer and don’t have time to watch the whole 2 hours, you can do a search and put in the candidates name and it will come up with comments they have made in past meetings. For some insight, check out the January 2, 2013 issue.

When you go into our website, you will see a listing. Click on the one that says, “Past Editions.” Scroll down until you see the issue mentioned above. You will see some of the candidates running now that were interviewed in that edition. Some of the questions presented to them in the past still are hanging over the Board of Education now. Isn’t the internet wonderful when used constructively?

Now, it’s up to you. Here are the Perth Amboy Board of Education candidates and their ballot positions:

Reyes Ortega 1-I

Mark Carvajal 2-I

Benjamin L. Salerno 3-I

Damaris Isales 4-I

Anton J. Massopust 5-I

Junior Iglesia 6-I

Samuel Lebreault 7-I

Israel Varela 8-I

Anthony Bermudez 9-I

Don’t forget to vote for the following offices: Governor, Senator, Assembly, Freeholders and Sheriff. Most importantly, there are two very important public questions:

Question 1 is to support Veterans to keep money that they raised funds for to help themselves.

Personally for Question 1, I am shocked that the Veterans were prohibited from doing this before.

Question 2 is to raise the minimum wage to $8.25 per hour. Subsequently there will be an increase based on a cost of living, if this passes.

There have been two sides to this issue. Whatever you feelings are, it is important to vote, especially on these two questions.

-Carolyn M. & Katherine M.